Question about Reincarnation

[yajvan]

hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~

namasté

Just an idea ....

When one realizes brahman the upaniṣads say, 'those that know brahman become brahman' .

If this is so ( and I do not dispute this at all) , why are we still left in a physical frame, localized as if we were lokāyatin's¹ ? I have been taught that the frame remains due to leśāvidya .

• leśa + avidya gives leśāvidya
• leśa = a small part or portion , particle , atom , little bit or slight trace
• avidya = ignornace

Hence we remain in this frame due to the remains ( a small portion) of ignorance. Some small atomic part. Perhaps the awareness is perfect and stainless completely residing in the SELF/brahman, yet there are other parts perhaps that still are infused with ignorance.

praṇām



words

• lokāyatin or lokāyata is composed of the following lokā +yata.
  • We know this loka as 'that or the other world', a place or level.
  • et there is another definition for this meaning ordinary life , worldly affairs , and faculty of seeing , sight.
    This seeing and sight is a macro way of saying the senses; yata means restrained , held in , held forth , kept down or limited , subdued , governed
  • So a lokāyatin is one restrained, held or kept down by the senses.

[Kismet]

Namaste KismetJi, you bring up something very interesting. Can you please explain :

Jiva01 is now liberated, and considers herself the Self/Brahman. Disconnected from BMI (bodi-mind-intellect-ego).
There is prarabdha , and ideally the upadhi will fall off like a tyre wheel set in motion - wobble wobble collapse. Done.

Ideally, yes it would fall off completely. But I don't see how this would happen. Not if the leftover prarabdha causes rebirth and a return to nescience.

In your example, that leftover lifetime is not enough for jiva01's prarabdha. So she takes birth again, but is disconnected from BMI right since birth.

The liberated being remains free, both in death and life, from any stain of ignorance. What happens, according to my interpretation, is that the leftover prarabdha that was not exhausted generates a new body, and the Self "falls" into ignorance once again as a limited entity, taking its sense of doership from the previous karmas. But the original jiva which experienced liberation is now the Witness, not the imaginary doer.

You said "the sense of doership is passed to an illusiory upAdhi-laden jiva" ? Which one ? jiva01 ? Someone other than this jiva01 ? But is she not disconnected from upAdhi since birth with "aham brahmAsmi" ?

I think it would be beneficial to visualize what I mean as a set of concentric circles. Now, what I think happens in liberation is that the individual jiva (small circle) realizes its oneness with the whole (large circle). The space in the jar realizes it is all of space. From then on there is only parabrahman, sat-cit-ananda, the Self.

However, the former karmas return and, in the middle of this great circle generate a new body, a new jar as it were, where the pure awareness of the Self may become clouded by adjuncts once again in the form of a limited jiva.

Who has the sense of doership in the new birth ? Or did you mean that prakruti alone is handed this doership and not jiva01 ?

It is a clone copy of the same jiva as before that identified with previous actions.

Brahman does not do anything. It is static. Prakriti is responsible for all motion. The jiva identifies with prakriti (the body) and hence suffers. But the nature of jiva is atman-Brahman, sat-cit-ananda, etc. I cannot explain exactly how the imaginary doer comes into being. It is beyond my knowledge. What I can say is that samskaras/karmas are necessary to generate a new body, nescience, etc.

What acc. to you happens when BMI of jiva01 dies again, this time prArabdha all gone ? Does she know "i am jiva01 who has realized Brahman" ? Or not ?

thank you.

The Self knows itself by itself. Upon realization one has perfect Knowledge and is raised to the transcendental position of Parabrahman. However, the laws of karma being what they are, a new entity is generated in which the awareness of the Self becomes localized.

This is a difficult concept to get one's head around, I'll admit. But to me it seems correct.

[Kismet]

Namaste Kismet,

It doesn't matter what you feel is right or what I feel is right. My feeling or your feeling in a particular way doesn't make anything right or wrong. What I am saying is based on what Sastras say and what the Self-realised souls said.

I agree we shouldn't go by feeling alone, but by reason and authority. My reason tells me that my current interpretation is correct: rebirth continues, not for the liberated mukta, but for the jiva that remains in possession of the sense of doership.

I cannot accept your version because it is against what Lord Krishna says in BG and what the Upanishads say and also what the Self-realised souls said.

You may like to refer to Chapter 4 of BG which talks in detail about Karma etc.

... BTW, if you think you are right, I have no issues as I am not here to prove you wrong. I participated in this discussion thinking that you needed help to understand how karma works ... but if you are so sure then certainly you don't need any help.

My best wishes ...

OM

Right now I think I am right, but who knows? I might be wrong or be proved wrong in the near future.

I will have to look at more of the statements made by sages and the texts of scripture, but right now I do not see any sort of contradiction.

I am not saying the liberated being is reborn, to be perfectly clear. He remains one with the whole and does not need to take any rebirth. What I actually think, and this is something I've just clarified to myself, is that a new entity is generated by former karmas and that limiting adjuncts cause the awareness of the Self to become localized yet again.

[yajvan]

hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~

namast�

Hi,

Like even though he is realized, he gets some disease.

His/her body gets the dis-ease, not the core, the Reality of the person - the Self.

praṇām

[charitra]

rebirth continues, not for the liberated mukta, but for the jiva that remains in possession of the sense of doership.

I am not saying the liberated being is reborn, to be perfectly clear. He remains one with the whole and does not need to take any rebirth. What I actually think, and this is something I've just clarified to myself, is that a new entity is generated by former karmas and that limiting adjuncts cause the awareness of the Self to become localized yet again.

The link is atma between one birth and the next, nothing else. Agreed?
Elighten me then in this ‘next after the LAST birth’ what was the relic that reenters a new body, is it the old atman or does it have to be a new atman. Moksha or liberation ends journey for old atman per sastras.

What is the common denominator between the final birth of old jiva that remained the abode of the atman and the nascent jiva’s first birth. If mukti or moksha by definition ends the rebirth cycle for the (same old) atma, which was hitherto doing rounds on the earth in new avatars with a different body and a mind each birth, we cannot track it anymore other than as an integral part of unmanifest brahman. If new jivas atma is quite different from the old atma( in the previous jiva of same lineage), the chain is broken and no commonality exists between the two pedigrees. The way my atma is distinct from yours, they both (old jiva and new jiva in your theory) are just as different as you and me. Namaste.
.

[Kismet]

The link is atma between one birth and the next, nothing else. Agreed?
Elighten me then in this �next after the LAST birth� what was the relic that reenters a new body, is it the old atman or does it have to be a new atman. Moksha or liberation ends journey for old atman per sastras.

What is the common denominator between the final birth of old jiva that remained the abode of the atman and the nascent jiva�s first birth. If mukti or moksha by definition ends the rebirth cycle for the (same old) atma, which was hitherto doing rounds on the earth in new avatars with a different body and a mind each birth, we cannot track it anymore other than as an integral part of unmanifest brahman. If new jivas atma is quite different from the old atma( in the previous jiva of same lineage), the chain is broken and no commonality exists between the two pedigrees. The way my atma is distinct from yours, they both (old jiva and new jiva in your theory) are just as different as you and me. Namaste.
.

Agh, how on earth am I to explain this? Perhaps I am just missing the right vocabulary.

Anyhow, I don't buy that the soul is something that enters a body. I see it more as the inverse: it is a body that enters a soul, or more to the point the Soul, the Self of all beings. From thereon out the awareness which is constitutive of the Self becomes localized and pure, unadulterated consciousness is corrupted - but not Brahman in its own essence. Sort of like, how the analogy goes, you form curds out of milk. The milk remains but in another form.

I will think about this and see if I can find any better way of explaining exactly what it is I mean.

[SOV]

Please consider this carefully. Prarabhdha is the karma which has 'already taken effect'. That means until the body and the acquired jnana(worldly) and so remains. Once the body is dead, how can there be prarabhdha? Because one needs a body either human or divine or some other sort for the karma to take effect. That means to say, if one gets a new body/birth, that is sanchitha karma. These terminologies are just for our understanding of how it works. If a person attains that state in a human birth, then there is no more birth of another body. In BG, it is said- for him, when there is no present world, then how can he go to any other world-

But mainly, one has to understand how jnana and karma are related. Then you will understand how it works.

[Kismet]

Please consider this carefully. Prarabhdha is the karma which has 'already taken effect'. That means until the body and the acquired jnana(worldly) and so remains.

Prarabdha is the karma that is taking effect and will take effect in the future, is it not (that is, the inevitable effects having to take place even after realization, like your disease example)? I do not see why karma cannot continue to take effect after a post-mortem date, this seems kind of arbitrary to me. But then again perhaps I do not know enough about karma to judge.

Once the body is dead, how can there be prarabhdha? Because one needs a body either human or divine or some other sort for the karma to take effect. That means to say, if one gets a new body/birth, that is sanchitha karma.

I suppose in such a case it would have to depend on how distant the time delay is between the karma being sown and the karma taking effect. You say sanchita karma, or actual desire if I am not mistaken is necessary for a new body or birth to be had. But perhaps a new body or birth is necessitated by karmic law itself, so that effects may thereby play themselves out.

These terminologies are just for our understanding of how it works. If a person attains that state in a human birth, then there is no more birth of another body. In BG, it is said- for him, when there is no present world, then how can he go to any other world-

But mainly, one has to understand how jnana and karma are related. Then you will understand how it works.

I understand our human understanding of these things is imperfect. So why not speculate? It may tie up some loose ends, for all we know. Plus, I find it fun personally.

Again, I agree that for the mukta there is no more birth. But does this negate the possibility that there is no more playing out of karmic effects in the form of a re-constituted jiva? I don't know, but in my view this scheme ties up certain loose ends, like the question of how eternality is bound up with jivahood.

[Kismet]

I hope, by the way, that I am not coming across as too big a heretic or anything... I find these things very fascinating not to mention real and I just want to plumb the depths of these things and arrive at as clear and distinct a conception of them as I can.

I am not averse to authority (at least, I don't think I am) but if something does not make sense to me (that is, I find it incoherent) I like to reason it out with myself.

With regard to this issue, one of the main reasons I posit a reincarnation, or "re-constituted jivahood" emananting from the jivanmukta, is because in my mind I feel I have to deal with the conundrum of: how do eternal jivas arrive at liberation? If nescience is anadi or beginningless, then wouldn't they each have to traverse an infinite amount of time prior to liberation?

[SOV]

Very well put. And a really good question. Here we have two things to consider. After a person realizes in a certain birth, there is the paramarthika view which comes into effect. Ideally, the karma would have effected the person and he should have had another birth. But in paramarthika view, there is no karma like you already know. In that case, you might ask, why doesn't the adjuncts fall apart the moment one realizes? Eventually it falls apart. But going by the same logic, he can't have the next birth/form since that's the dead end of samsara or the karma chain.

An example(very silly though)- Let's say countless boats are alligned in a row on an endless ocean with some gap in between for the boats to sail. Each boat is a birth. And the paramarthika state means, you climb up to a helicopter waiting for you. Each boat meets the next boat after a lapse of time. You climb from one boat to the one next after the boat meets another boat. Simultaneously the previous boat sinks while the you hop on to the next boat and start sailing towards next one. So at some stage you climb that helicopter which is the end of the chain. So there is no more chain for you. The boat however continues to sail until it meets the next boat and then sinks. But since you have already climbed the helicopter, there is no more relation with the boats or the ocean. But even this example won't prove the point completely. So just an adjustment in the story: You don't climb up(there's a ladder) straight away deserting the boat once you get the heli, but you hold on to that ladder while still sailing on the boat. Once the boat sinks, you don't jump to next one. That's it. Hope all this made sense.

But the best explanation is given in the gita.